How to write protect your USB Flash drive

 

Many a time it becomes necessary for us to write protect our USB flash drive for protection against viruses and other malicious programs. Because flash drives are so popular and widely used for moving data between computers, it is the primary objective of attackers as a means to get infections spread around the world. Also, since USB drive is read-only memory (ROM), the data inside can be easily modified or deleted by malicious programs.

But, unfortunately, most new drives flash does not come with a feature like switch manufacturers will want to reduce production costs. Therefore, the only way to protect your registration USB flash drive is to turn this feature on your own computer.

This can be done by adding a small entry in the Windows registry, which acts as a switch that can be activated to use the write-protected or disabled to allow write access. Simply follow these steps:

1. open the Registry Editor (open "Run" dialog regedit, type and hit "Enter").

2. navigate to following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\

3. to generate a new key named StorageDevicePolicies as. To do this right-click the control and click new-> key and name the StorageDevicePolicies as.

4. Now right-click StorageDevicePolicies and create a new-> value (32 bit), DWORD, and name the WriteProtect as.

 

 

 

 

 

5. double-click WriteProtect and set the value data in 1.

Now, the right to protection for USB drives is enabled on your computer (no restart required) and thus would not be possible for anyone or any program for adding/deleting contents from USB flash drive. Any attempt to copy or download files on USB drive will cause the following error message that appears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To go back and remove the write-protection, all you need to do is simply change the value data for WriteProtect (step 5) 1 back to 0. write access to all USB devices is now re-enabled.

Sometimes it may seem difficult to remember and follow the steps above every time you want to enable/disable the write-protection. Therefore, as a workaround, there are many tools available to automatically enable/disable write-protected. From my favorite tool is USB write protect by Naresh Manadhar. Using this tool you can restrict write access to your USB drives with a simple click of a button. You can download this tool from the following link:

Popularity: 1% [?]

Read also visitors who read this post:

1. How to protect your computer against Keyloggers

2. How to change the background of Windows 7 logon screen

3. How to modify the Windows product Id

4. 10 tips to avoid Adware

  By using this site, following you agree to our legal disclaimer